Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Bakunin]

You need to slow-cook the poor.

I recommend marinading your typical hobo for at least 48 hours in a mixture of strong cider and a selection of strongly-flavoured herbs and spices. Only after having rifled their pockets and been at their gold teeth and fillings with a set of pliers, naturally. Then having eviscerated and dissected your random poor person (they're readily available at all good cardboard boxes, derelict buildings and outside off-licences and supermarkets doing cheap booze deals) you put the excess in your deep freeze for later, putting the offal and a few choice cuts aside for your cat, naturally, (waste not want not in these difficult and austere times), you either do a nice casserole in your slow cooker or opt for gentle, slow-roasting at about 160 degrees while you're preparing the mixed vegetables and enjoying a nice glass of good red wine as red always works better with meat, I find.

One advantage to the current economic climate is that hobos are a constantly available food source and, if you're lucky, you can also appease your social conscience and sense of natural justice when you realise that your Sunday roast was once a banker, politician or previously employed by the DWP. Hobos aren't just for Christmas. If you're not too greedy they can last right through to New Year as well.

Bakunin: Providing austerity-friendly serving suggestions since 1975.

 

[TruXta]

Self-pickled hobos!

 

[Bakunin]

Self-pickled hobos!

Some do come pre-marinaded, yes. But your more cultured and sophisticated homicidal maniac will disdain these bargain basement ready meals in favour of the premium brand tramps that haven't been flavoured with white cider and recycled cigarette butts. Personally, as a gentleman of taste and distinction, I'd only opt for the own-brand type in the absence of fresher and more appetising produce.

One has to keep up one's standards, after all.

 

[smokedout]

Aldi's cheap version are 80p a tube, and taste better.

they won't last, Tesco used to do an 80p version, gone now, you can't fuck with pringles

 

[tufty79]

Shotgun would be crap. You'd blow away either a big chunk of chest, or a big portion of head, both of which are decent grub!

i wasn't going to use it on the pig

 

[smokedout]

and i'm going to splash out on some red wine vinegar tomorrow just to make the bacon casserole. cheers for the link - i'm going to well nick her recipes

e2a: fucking hell, it's in four of the seven recipes. targeted at 'typical' guardian reader (at least, the food/drink section) shopper profiles much?

because it was annoying me in bed last night I had another look at this, which is supposed to cover all weekly food needs for two people. it comes to just over 4000 calories in total, so about 300 calories a day per person - around half of what japanese prisoners of war were given and probably not enough to keep you alive

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/20/10-pound-a-week-recipes

 

[tufty79]

Every time you mention them, they sound like a bigger bunch of up-themselves hypocrites, frankly!

i spent a lot of time cooking chips to put on my shoulder when i lived there. as soon as i got offered a flat, i RAN

 

[caleb]

Latest from the intersectionalistas is that it's racist to ask somebody where they are from.

 

[andysays]

Latest from the intersectionalistas is that it's racist to ask somebody where they are from.

It's not about where you're from, it's where you're at, maaaaan

 

[JimW]

When I saw what I take you to be referring to, it did bring up that annoying thing people get of "where are you from?", you say Lewisham and then they go, "No originally" or whatever if you're not white, which I can imagine would get old very quick.

 

[caleb]

When I saw what I take you to be referring to, it did bring up that annoying thing people get of "where are you from?", you say Lewisham and then they go, "No originally" or whatever if you're not white, which I can imagine would get old very quick.

My dad's white and he gets that (swap Lewisham for Acton), because he speaks English with a non-British accent. I imagine it can be annoying, I don't think it's intrinsically racist.

I'm not so much referring to the article either, but the discussions I saw about it, which included the assertion that it's okay for 'POC' to ask where somebody is from because they're likely to be 'genuinely interested' whereas when a cracker does it it's about asserting white supremacy.

 

[JimW]

My dad's white and he gets that (swap Lewisham for Acton), because he speaks English with a non-British accent. I imagine it can be annoying, I don't think it's intrinsically racist. I

Yeah, strikes me as one of those things where intent counts even though it likely is annoying.

 

[Greebo]

they won't last, Tesco used to do an 80p version, gone now, you can't fuck with pringles

Lidl have an own brand version too in about 4 flavours.

 

[Buckaroo]

Lidl have an own brand version too in about 4 flavours.

Aldi too. Check your pringles.

 

[caleb]

Yeah, strikes me as one of those things where intent counts even though it likely is annoying.

Intent and basic manners. I've been with my dad a number of times when people have gone 'where are you from? no, where are you from from?' and felt uncomfortable at where the conversation might go because of the person's tone or whatever, but it's always ended up being genuine interest. Also, I can't help but feel that a racist, xenophobe or fascist is going to judge whether a person is 'British' or not based on appearance, accent, name, etc., once they've decided that, they're hardly going to be concerned with establishing whether you were Deptford born and bred or not.

But then most privilege theory people are only concerned with manners, really. Despite all the protestations that racism is structural and systemic - something I agree with, despite the fact it's only rattled out in order to argue that you can't be racist to white people - they're oddly fixated with the minutiae of individual actions, especially those which take place within the activist ghetto. It's not really about privilege, strip it all away and it's basic politeness.

 

[J Ed]

Never really thought about it like that, brilliant! Although I would replace 'politeness' with etiquette

 

[Lo Siento.]

Surely the racism is in disregarding the initial answer to "where are you from" rather than asking the question in the first place. Enquiring after origins is pretty standard small talk...

 

[caleb]

Never really thought about it like that, brilliant! Although I would replace 'politeness' with etiquette

Yeah, etiquette is better.

It was reading about the 'thin privilege' stuff that made me realise it. Take away the 'privilege' shite (which makes no sense - how do thin people benefit from overweight people being overweight?) and it's basically "overweight people feel uncomfortable when people make comments about their weight, don't do it". It's something any sound person already knows, it's so basic it doesn't need much (if any) explaining, and certainly no hand-wringing. Yet when you start talking about 'privilege' you alienate people who would otherwise be on side, and some privilegistas seem to revel in this discomfort, which I find odd -- if the point is to improve organisational relationships, why be so deliberately divisive*? (The 'you can't be racist to white people' is another one of these -- even if it's true, why be so dismissive of people who challenge it?).

Noel Ignatiev, who developed privilege theory initially, has actually expressed bemusement at the way it's being used by activists to explain group dynamics.

*Worst example I've seen was a tweet along the lines of 'I can't wait until us brown people are in charge, and I can refuse to give Mr Smith a job because of his surname'. Like, I don't know why you'd even joke about making people unemployed.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Yeah, etiquette is better.

It was reading about the 'thin privilege' stuff that made me realise it. Take away the 'privilege' shite (which makes no sense - how do thin people benefit from overweight people being overweight?) and it's basically "overweight people feel uncomfortable when people make comments about their weight, don't do it". It's something any sound person already knows, it's so basic it doesn't need much (if any) explaining, and certainly no hand-wringing. Yet when you start talking about 'privilege' you alienate people who would otherwise be on side, and some privilegistas seem to revel in this discomfort, which I find odd -- if the point is to improve organisational relationships, why be so deliberately divisive*? (The 'you can't be racist to white people' is another one of these -- even if it's true, why be so dismissive of people who challenge it?).

One of my main problems with "privilege" as a concept is that it takes something positive (trying to make people aware of different experiences) and turns it automatically into a criticism, and makes an exchange instantly hostile.

I was reading Jill Miller's book You Can't Kill The Spirit recently, about Women Against Pit Closures, and for me it demonstrates what an alternative "intersectionality" could be (for want of a better term). It's different groups of people (women in mining communities, black community groups, LGBT groups) finding sameness in their different struggles, understanding and helping each other through solidarity. That's difference manifesting itself as greater strength and class unity, not division.

 

[andysays]

...Worst example I've seen was a tweet along the lines of 'I can't wait until us brown people are in charge, and I can refuse to give Mr Smith a job because of his surname'. Like, I don't know why you'd even joke about making people unemployed.

The most obvious of that statement, though not perhaps the biggest, is the assumption that you can deduce from the surname Smith that someone is necessarily "white" and therefore deserving of such "payback" (assuming for the sake of argument that a "white" Smith would be deserving)

 

[andysays]

One of my main problems with "privilege" as a concept is that it takes something positive (trying to make people aware of different experiences) and turns it automatically into a criticism, and makes an exchange instantly hostile.

I was reading Jill Miller's book You Can't Kill The Spirit recently, about Women Against Pit Closures, and for me it demonstrates what an alternative "intersectionality" could be (for want of a better term). It's different groups of people (women in mining communities, black community groups, LGBT groups) finding sameness in their different struggles, understanding and helping each other through solidarity. That's difference manifesting itself as greater strength and class unity, not division.

Yeah, like working class women/members of black community groups/ members of LGBT groups would ever be together enough/able to overcome their racist/homophobic/anti-working class prejudices enough on their own, without some nice middle class privilegista to explain it all to them, to do that...

 

[J Ed]

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/07/page-three-not-online-porn

Laurie does Cameron's liberal gymnastics on porn but in reverse.

 

[SpineyNorman]

One of my main problems with "privilege" as a concept is that it takes something positive (trying to make people aware of different experiences) and turns it automatically into a criticism, and makes an exchange instantly hostile.

I was reading Jill Miller's book You Can't Kill The Spirit recently, about Women Against Pit Closures, and for me it demonstrates what an alternative "intersectionality" could be (for want of a better term). It's different groups of people (women in mining communities, black community groups, LGBT groups) finding sameness in their different struggles, understanding and helping each other through solidarity. That's difference manifesting itself as greater strength and class unity, not division.

I think this is an important point - it's almost as if the starting point for priveligistas is that these are all different struggles, in no way linked, and that for example black liberation is against the interests of, say, working class people. It's the opposite of solidarity - in order to be a good 'ally' you have to sacrifice yourself at the altar of the oppressed.

 

[SpineyNorman]

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/07/page-three-not-online-porn

Laurie does Cameron's liberal gymnastics on porn but in reverse.

'Page 3 is the worst cos the proles read the Sun in their dinner breaks'

 

[rekil]

someone should tweet laurie penny something about how some women are too dumb to capitalise on their physical/youthful look and see if she agrees or disagrees

lauriepenny - whatcha reckon?

 

[Firky]

Surely the racism is in disregarding the initial answer to "where are you from" rather than asking the question in the first place.

Very well put.

 

[emanymton]

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/07/page-three-not-online-porn

Laurie does Cameron's liberal gymnastics on porn but in reverse.

 

[smokedout]

'Page 3 is the worst cos the proles read the Sun in their dinner breaks'

this is the key point, women being objectified in Game of Thrones, or Kate Moss in her underwear in The Observer supplement is culture, working class women in a working class newspaper is porn and should be banned

 

[SpineyNorman]

this is the key point, women being objectified in Game of Thrones, or Kate Moss in her underwear in The Observer supplement is culture, working class women in a working class newspaper is porn and should be banned

It's only basic good sense though. People sophisticated enough to read the Observer and watch game of thrones are obviously well balanced and intelligent enough to look at some tits and not become a sex pest as a result. But you just know that those proles will turn into Peter Sutcliffe at the merest glimpse of Sam Fox's nipple

 

[emanymton]

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/07/page-three-not-online-porn

Laurie does Cameron's liberal gymnastics on porn but in reverse.

So the problem with Page 3 is that it makes her life harder?